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Chuck Pyle, songwriter and 'Zen Cowboy' of Boulder, dies at 70

Guitarist busked on Pearl Street Mall, even as recording career took off

By Alex Burness

Staff Writer

Posted:
11/11/2015 10:22:44 PM MST

Updated:
11/12/2015 02:28:18 PM MST

Pyle playing at the Hotel Boulderado in 1977. He called it among his favorite venues. (Photo credit: Keegan Pyle)

Memorial service and fund

A celebration of Chuck Pyle's life will be held Saturday beginning at 11:00 AM at the Tri-Lakes Center for the Arts, 304 Hwy. 105 in Palmer Lake. The public is invited to attend.

A memorial fund has been established to support Pyle's surviving family. Donations can be sent to the Chuck Pyle Memorial Fund, P.O. Box 726, Palmer Lake, Colo., 80133

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was updated Nov. 12 to correct the name of Chuck Pyle's second wife.

Chuck Pyle, the former Pearl Street busker and master guitarist known as the "Zen Cowboy," and revered in country and western circles for his evocative, humorous songwriting, died last week while fly-fishing near his home in Palmer Lake. He was 70.

For five decades, Pyle graced the stage of nearly every venue in the Boulder area — The Walrus, Hotel Boulderado and the defunct Peggy's Hi-Lo were among his favorites — and enthralled crowds with his music, then hooked them with his charisma.

"He was selling moderation and light-heartedness," Pyle's son, Keegan, said by phone Wednesday. "Don't take yourself too seriously, and don't take the world too seriously."

Pyle felt the people of Colorado embodied those ideals. In "Colorado," his ode to the state, he sang of a place "Where the mountain folks and the old cowpokes have found a peace of mind.

"I guess a love of mother nature makes you naturally kind."

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On top of his 12 albums, which included songs later covered by the likes of John Denver, Suzy Bogguss and Jerry Jeff Walker, Pyle coined a slew of -isms: Life is short, but it's wide. Always ride a horse in the direction that it's going. Start slow and taper off. For every mile of road, there's two miles of ditch.

A self-proclaimed "refugee of the plains," Pyle dropped out of Grinnell College in his home state of Iowa and moved Boulder in 1965, hoping to live among the city's creative types and build a career in music.

Pyle playing at the Hotel Boulderado in 1977. He called it among his favorite venues. (Photo credit: Keegan Pyle) ((Photo credit: Canon City Daily Record))

In the winter of 1970, having made minor progress as a musician, he was invited to a cabin in Gold Hill that was owned by Steve Fromholtz, the late songwriter and one-time poet laureate of Texas. There, he met the musicians John Cable and Richard Dean, and the three remained best friends up until Pyle's death.

"A giant blizzard hit while we were at that cabin," Dean recalled. "We all huddled around the kitchen stove for three straight days. We never left the stove, just playing guitars and singing, having just met."

Cable and Pyle joined forces soon after that night, in the five-piece band Colours - one of several groups he'd play with before going solo around 1980, and never looking back.

It was in his solo career that the Zen Cowboy was born.

But even as a successful solo act, Pyle would make trips down to the Pearl Street Mall every few weeks, and not because he needed the money.

"He just wanted to be around people," Keegan Pyle said. "Between songs, he would tell jokes to people."

"He was just very cool," said John McVey of Coupe Studios in Boulder, where Pyle recorded for 12 years.

Of the cowboy style, McVey added: "I don't know anybody, other than the Marlboro Man, who looked better in a 10-gallon hat."

McVey had also never seen such a tactician on the guitar.

"His guitar playing is something I still can't quite figure out," said McVey. "His left hand was very efficient and his right hand - the picking hand - was like what the best stride piano players could do. He would play a bass line and chords at the same time, and just with him, it was completely full-sounding."

He never garnered widespread acclaim, but those who knew his music admired him greatly. At the Kerrville Folk Festival - a gathering similar in style to Telluride's annual event, but with a particular focus on lyricism - Pyle was a star.

"I was walking around with him there, getting treated like royalty," said Gordon Burt, who played fiddle alongside Pyle for more than 20 years, including on several albums. "I was with the king."

Even in the later stage of his career, Pyle played about 100 gigs a year, including for the opening session of the Colorado State Legislature. His tours were varied in venue and spanned the country; he was as likely to appear on a festival stage as a theater or coffeehouse or someone's private residence. On one occasion, Pyle fans Bill and Melinda Gates had him play at their Seattle home.

An outdoorsman and consummate Coloradan, Pyle had been hooked on fly-fishing since the mid-1980s, when his friend Robert Quinlan bought him a fly rod in exchange for guitar lessons. Pyle moved to Palmer Lake, north of Colorado Springs, with his second wife, Terri Watson, about 15 years ago. He went fishing often there, including on the day he died.

For his album "True Unity," Pyle wrote a song called "Above the San Luis," which details his trip soaring in a glider over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado. When he's gone, he sings, he's "going to the garden of gorgeous language."

"What that means, I'm not really sure," Quinlan said. "But when I get sad about missing Chuck, I think about him soaring above the Sangres in the garden of gorgeous language. That's heaven to him, I think."

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